Visibility management and profile construction on Tinder

Purpose This article examines how visibility and recognizability are configured through self-presentation on Tinder. It conceptualizes visibility management as a framework for examining the degree and form of exposure through which users become available for recognition and evaluation within a platform environment. Design/methodology/approach Drawing on digital ethnography and qualitative analysis of 100 Tinder profiles, the study examines recurrent configurations of facial and bodily recognizability, visual concealment and other forms of visual and textual disclosure. The corpus consists of female profiles presented to two research accounts in the Barcelona area in 2023. Findings The findings identify three modes of profile presentation: concealment, negotiation and integration. These modes capture different configurations of exposure and recognizability. Concealment substantially restricts physical recognizability while retaining varying forms of visual or textual disclosure; negotiation combines recognizable and obscured elements within the same profile; and integration combines comparatively high physical recognizability with curated lifestyle representation. Rather than operating through a simple opposition between visibility and concealment, these modes indicate a continuum in which bodily exposure, facial recognizability and other forms of disclosure vary independently and in combination. Research limitations/implications The findings are based on qualitative analysis of 100 profiles visible within a specific demographic and geographic configuration of Tinder. The corpus consists exclusively of female profiles presented within a 10 km radius in the Barcelona area in 2023 and should not be interpreted as representative of Tinder users more broadly or as evidence of gender-independent patterns. Future research could combine profile analysis with interviews, comparative platform studies or cross-cultural approaches to further examine visibility management across digital environments and across different gender and sexual-orientation configurations. Originality/value The article reframes Tinder self-presentation as a form of visibility management. It distinguishes visibility management from self-presentation and impression management by foregrounding how different degrees and forms of exposure make users available for recognition and evaluation. The three empirically derived modes contribute to this framework by conceptualizing visibility as a continuum of recognizability and disclosure rather than a binary condition.